GH5050 summary findings on gender-responsive programming

A majority of organisations lack strategies to guide gender-responsive programming.

Gender-responsive action relies on bringing gender-related evidence and perspectives as well as expertise in organisational approaches to programming, monitoring and accountability. Programmatic strategies can help to ensure that gender-related health policy and practice is rights-based, inclusive, and evidence-informed—including the evidence of the gendered nature of health determinants.

Without a programmatic strategy to guide an organisation’s gender-responsive action and ensure a gender lens when considering priorities, allocating funds and designing services, dedicated financial and programmatic actions will remain piecemeal at best, and nonexistent at worst.

Our analysis reveals that many global health organisations still operate with a narrow view of gender and its relationship to health. Policies and programmes in many global health organisations focus mainly on gender as it relates to the health of women, and particularly their reproductive health and their roles as mothers. The changing patterns of death and disability that are responsible for health outcomes for all people have not yet been reflected in the agendas of many global health organisations.

So what do we do about it?

GH5050 recommendations

Organisations should move beyond the tendency to conflate gender with women so as to appreciate the gender-related determinants of everyone’s health.

Organisations should conduct gender-based analyses to inform the development, implementation and M&E of programmes, in order to better understand and address how gender affects health outcomes for everyone—girls, boys, women, men, and people with non-binary gender identities.